I don't know what the reason is for needing priests to be celibate.
A huge topic for discussion in itself.
It is a simply fact that Jesus, Paul, and the earliest followers whose disciples wrote the New Testament advocated celibacy.
It is also true that they did so believing the end of the age was drawing close and the parousia was at hand.
Early Christianity persistently praised and idealised celibates and ascetics, and had little appreciation for sex, sexuality, or marriage. Sexuality and marriage were seen largely in the context of prestige and power. Christian intellectuals (invariably drawn from among the elites) favoured the ascetical life partly because it suited their ideology. The majority of the laity, like the clergy, continued to marry and raise children as before.
Even if there IS a need, do ALL priests need to be celibate?
Clearly not, as the Church now accepts priests
as priests from the Anglican communions, for example, and does not require them to separate from their wives. They probably hope for continence in the marriage, but ...
If I understand correctly, priests, monks, and nuns are all in subdivisions called "orders" right?
Couldn't they slowly introduce orders of married priests?
They technically have. You also have tertiary orders of the monastic communities which does not require the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.
If I understand correctly, female deacons exist in the New Testament, but there are also some remarks in the New Testament that apparently speak directly against women in certain positions of authority, or or preaching. Is that correct?
Paul worked with female deacons, and Paul supported the silence of women in the synagogue.
But here we have 'revelation' seating in a cultural context, so a lot of what was perceived as 'good' got carried over into the Church.
There was a time when it was argued that there were female deacons until the Church was big enough in numbers to no longer require such an extraordinary and clearly unsatisfactory (!?) circumstance ... a view I disagree with. As soon as possible, the old patriarchy took control, and the degree of misogyny expressed by some early saints and theologians (and later) is breath-taking.
As I've said before – The Archangel Gabriel announced the Incarnation to a woman, not to a man (Joseph had a dream, no angelic appearance for him). The Risen Christ announced His resurrected presence to a woman first, and told her to tell the others. This in the time when the testimony of a woman, without correlative support (ie other witnesses), was inadmissible in a court of law ... that must say something.
Mary Magdalene is called the Apostle to the Apostles, but there is no equivalent station in the Church hierarchy.
Perhaps the priesthood is too many jobs rolled into one? Theologian, teacher, counselor, administrator
Yes.
I've heard of Catholicism as having multiple liturgies... Maybe each church should use several, with things like time of day, day of week, or which holiday or saints day (is that still a thing? I have only read about it) is on the calendar at that time, should dictate which of the many liturgies get used for which services.
Well readings vary on a three-year cycle, but yes, there were various liturgies, but I would suggest getting the basic, standard, vernacular right – or at least better – as a first step.
I agree with the idea of intellectualism being more prominent.
They are there ... it's just they never get a look in.
When the atheists like Dawkins, Hitchens and others were being offered tv slots and we delighted in watching Dawkins especially making fools of poorly-educated, well-meaning Evangelical Christians, it never occurred to anyone to put them up against an equivalent intellectually-gifted philosophers from the religious camp ...
Dawkins' entire thesis has been utterly dismantled by a Dominican writer, who showed the basic and fundamental error in his logic, upon which his whole edifice stood. But the media's not interested in that.
I wonder about the "Christianity is Judaism in light of Greek Philosophical Tradition" being true...
Probably more than people realise ...
I have many times and just recently had Jewish people remind me how different their religion is, and their approach to theology, and that it is not just "Christianity minus Jesus" or "Christianity minus church dogma"
True.
Including divorce... that prohibition against divorce...
Well that ties in with my reformed marriage idea, in which marriage is a social contract, and can be rescinded.
That seems like a good idea.
I'm full of 'em!
